House Republicans Hypocritically Call On Democrats To End 'Demagoguery'

June 01, 2011 2:50 pm ET —
Alan Pyke

At a press conference after this morning's debt-limit
meeting at the White House, senior House Republicans called on Democrats to
stop telling Americans what voucherizing Medicare will cost future seniors,
saying that such explanations of the GOP budget are 'demagoguery.' Rep. Paul
Ryan (R-WI) stepped to the microphone to tell a reporter that he "simply
explained what our plan is, how it works" to President Obama "so that in the
future he won't mischaracterize it."

Ryan went on to warn that "if we demagogue each other at the
leadership level then we're never gonna take on our debt."

RYAN: We gotta take on this debt. And if we demagogue each other at the
leadership level then we're never gonna take on our debt. We have a debt crisis
coming, we want to deal with this, and if we want to grow jobs and the economy,
we gotta get our spending under control, we gotta get our debt under control.
And if we try to demagogue each other's attempts to do that, then we're not
applying the kind of political leadership we need to get this economy growing
and get this debt under control. [...] I simply explained what our plan is,
how it works. It's been misdescribed by the president and many others, and so
we simply described to him precisely what it is we've been proposing, so he
hears from us how our proposal works, so that in the future he won't
mischaracterize it.

Watch:

Of course, there's a difference between 'demagoguery' and
spelling out the ugly, CBO-certified
facts
of the GOP's Medicare plan, which even the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal says would "essentially
end Medicare."

Ryan's decision to get sanctimonious about rhetoric now is a
rich bit of hypocrisy. Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" was loaded with demagoguery,
and from his official Republican response to
January's State of the Union address to his recent declaration that Democratic
spending is "the
whole reason" the debt limit needs to be raised, he's injected this debate
with unfounded
and hysterical attacks on Democrats. (And then there's the avalanche of pro-Republican
TV ads that ran last year falsely accusing Dems of 'gutting Medicare').

But now that Republicans have waded hip-deep into a
political quagmire by voting to replace Medicare with an
undervalued voucher program for everyone younger than 55, the man who
agrees with Glenn Beck that progressivism is "a cancer" says anyone who paints
an accurate picture of what his party would do to future seniors is a
"demagogue" and unfit to lead. Convenient.